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Writing tips

Hot off the press: our thoughts on what's happening in the world of brand language and business writing. Warning: may contain the occasional rant.

Writing tips

Why it’s sometimes good to piss off your readers

You know the saying: there are no statues of committees. But there are lots of committees in the corporate world. As a business writer, every word you commit to paper will be scrutinised by a dozen eyeballs at least.

Writing, Brand & marketing

Writing tips

Painfully positive?

I read our Anelia’s blog about how the upbeat packaging for Halls cough sweets put a smile on her face. Then on the train on the way home I spotted this Nurofen ad. And I have to admit I rolled my eyes so hard they practically disappeared into my brain.

Writing, Learning & development

Writing tips

The power of positive writing

After a month of working in the States, that uniquely American brand of optimism seems to have rubbed off on me. Maybe it’s because, for much of that time, I was in California, where they take positive thinking to a whole new level of ‘awesome’.

Writing, Brand & marketing

Writing tips

(Don’t) put a stop to it.

In workshops, we tell people to watch out. To watch out for the long sentence. Because long sentences are bad. They’re confusing. You lose your thread. You have to go back and read them again.

Writing, Learning & development

Writing tips

The value of surprise

Good business writing is planned writing In fiction, there’s the distinction between planning a story and discovering a story.

Writing, Learning & development

Writing tips

Come si scrive al Papa?

People often tell us that because a particular client is very grand and important, we should use a more formal writing style for them. Not so. Our Italian writer Mariella has proof that even the Pope’s happy with a more informal approach. Scroll down for an English translation.

Writing, Learning & development

Writing tips

George Orwell’s other rules of writing

In Politics and the English Language (1945), George Orwell suggests six rules of writing. If you’re in the habit of reading blogs written by language consultancies, you’ve almost certainly seen them.

Writing, Brand & marketing

Writing tips

Stop copying. Start imitating.

Imitation can be good, especially when you’re starting out as a writer or trying to master some new form of writing. (After all, imitation is the natural way we learn as kids.) Consciously imitating a writing style helps you to discover how it works, helps you to learn its underlying structure.

Writing, Brand & marketing

Writing tips

2013: the year of (self) actualisation?

I hope not. But Trendwatching has just listed the nine new business buzzwords it expects us to hear more of this year. And ‘datashaped’ (all one word), ‘remapped’ and ‘(self) actualised’ are all in there.

Writing, Customer experience

Writing tips

Say what

For years, that’s what brand agencies and language consultants have been telling their clients when selling them ‘tone of voice’. Want your customers to be more loyal? Your people to be more engaged? Your products and services to be more desirable? Just get rid of all that pesky jargon,

Writing, Brand & marketing

Writing tips

Hire great writers

I’m reading Rework by the 37signals software people. (It’s a ‘nuggets of wisdom we’ve sussed out by running our own business’ type book and was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller recently.)

Writing, Brand & marketing

Writing tips

Read all about it

This week we’re speaking to retail-themed press, telling banks and brands how they can improve their writing to keep their customers happier.

Writing, Brand & marketing

Writing tips

Three tips they stopped teaching at school

In all my years of education refining my wordsmithery – from GSCE to Masters – nobody ever mentioned rhetoric. It wasn’t until a chat down the pub with a stonemason that it popped up.

Consulting

Writing tips

Presidential words

It’s official. Obama won. You’ve probably already seen the two speeches. But here are the transcripts and some of our thoughts.

Consulting

Writing tips

Five things @HuffPostTaste could teach you about tweeting

@HuffPostTaste – the food bit of the Huffington Post – are tweeting pros. I’ve been putting together a lot of workshops on social media of late and they use all the tricks we tell our clients to use. So I thought I could let a few of their/our secrets slip.

Writing

Writing tips

Ready? Set? Go.

The largest set of definitions in the current Oxford English Dictionary is: set. It’s set apart by having 60,000 words devoted to it (or about half a novel’s worth).

Writing

Writing tips

Five ways to write for kids

How do you write about big, complex global issues for a child? Some people think you can’t, or that, if you do, you need to dumb things down. We disagree. We think writing for a child is pretty similar to writing for an adult.

Writing

Writing tips

Gone but not forgotten

Your out of office message is a really good opportunity to engage with your clients or customers and show a bit of personality. But it’s so often wasted.

Writing

Writing tips

Singing in a simpler voice

The Twitterverse is full of nutty ideas. On one of my twambles*, I came across @ShakespeareSong – an account dedicated to writing ‘modern songs and phrases in archaic language’.

Writing

Writing tips

Grammar isn’t everything

Remember that ‘grammar nazi’ sketch on Mitchell & Webb? The boss of a business calmly shoots employees who misuse or (mostly) mispronounce words and ends up killing himself when a colleague points out his own mistake.

Writing, Learning & development